I think I want this crazy life | 13 March 2006

Belle has fleas and they keep biting me. This is the last thing I want to deal with right now. I need to take her to the vet tomorrow and I need to go to the TSU library to work on invite stuff.

Mike and I tried on wedding bands today. Everything is feeling more real. We have a wedding coordinator who will hopefully put my mind at ease.

There is still a lot of work to do — and school will get so insane. And then I need to make poetry.

Rereading S. Plath and some of her journals and her bio — and I think I want this crazy life. All I want to do & can’t live up to.

Life stops us — but we, most of anyway, keep trying.

The moment is gone, my wedding | 19 June 2006

I was too busy to write — which saddens me, and the moment is gone, my wedding — so beautiful and perfect and fun, my dream, just as I wanted it, and my unexpected nervousness and everyone there.

I really can’t describe how amazing it was, the whole weekend in my favorite place in the world. Mike is my husband, and I will hold him like an oak barrel holds wine and we will love this life together.

Mike and I move in less than 2 weeks, so that’s my project for this week and next. Then I go to Paris. Then I’m in Austin for a week or 2 and then I have to go to Mily/Chicago for Becky & Josie’s bachelorette parties. It’s a busy summer, and then, hopefully, in August I can write and submit poems until school begins and I have to start thinking about teaching again. It’s going to go by fast as it always does.

When do I begin to write for real? | 6 July 2006

Paris — Here visiting Kelly. I’m at her apartment; she is still at work. It was a long day of traveling, but I’m starting to feel better. We’re going out to dinner and leaving tomorrow for Burgundy.

I feel unfrozen right now — and I’m not sure what that means. American music coming from the windows below and everything seems more lovely from here.

When do I begin to write for real? Am I not? The failure associated with what I’m doing — the life I’ve chosen to live. Bishop wrote here and Stein and, of course, Camus. They say this city is magic.

The wishful thinking had become just thoughts, her mind like a message in a bottle. She had it all, but

The way your hand fell into mine | 6 July 2006

Paris–

Sea, thoughts of
the long windows that
opened out to it — there
the way your hand fell
into mine, the sand
and the broken
glass, blues and greens

Coming back from Paris | 11 July 2006

En Route Houston –

Coming back from Paris. A beautiful weekend spent in Burgundy tasting wine and driving through the small villages of France. Perfect — except without Mike who would have loved it. Makes me think of traveling with him for the rest of our lives — getting to — married. Sometimes it still doesn’t seem real, the word, married, the word husband.

It’s been so long | 19 July 2006

Claremore, OK — Staying here in Will Rogers’ hometown (or near it). On my way to Iowa City tomorrow. How will that feel?

It’s been so long and him completely, completely out of my life. I can’t imagine the last time, and everything that city used to be.

—

When they lead him out of the police car, his face is a ghost, like his skin had been burned right off and all that was left was a white sheet. But his eyes, his eyes hit me like a bullet, as I drove by and parked my car on the next block to buy a fried cherry pie.

This was my moment in Gainsville, TX.

I carry the weight of you | 5 November 2006

Months. This journal has been in Milwaukee since Josie’s wedding — and sleeping next to Mike makes me write in this less.

Nothing new. School, teaching, trying to write poems. How I want to. Eleanor Wilner is in town. I’ve spent the past two days driving her around. Poet’s notice things. They tell you what they see. Describe in interesting ways — “the birds are doing their sunset swirl.” I dream of being like them. If only …

everything.

I carry the weight of you — writing about you might get me no where.

To leave the beloved behind…

Life is not what we think it will be | 30 November 2006

Afternoon. Laziness. Out the window, the wind sways the trees. I think of you. Wonder if you even know I’m married. How would you know? Do you sense it? Will I ever see you again? Eight years, ten, and then nothing.

Sunlight on the leaves, if you were there, in my backyard, by the fence, waiting. It cannot happen. I let go. I let her have you. I did not fight. I must not have loved you as much as I claimed to.

Life is not what we think it will be. It breaks you and rebuilds you into someone you no longer life, someone passionless and uneventful.

How to be a writer? | 30 November 2006

How to be a writer? I look at my life and wonder how to get outside of myself in terms of words. How to be a poet? Often times I don’t know. My life is not much right now. Too much TV and Internet. How to break through laziness. The need to be more than I am …

The mysteriousness of language | 5 December 2006

Reading Montale then Ann Marie Macari, I think I’m starting to get it — poetry. The mysteriousness of language, why form may be good for me. Writing to the you not the reader about the you (Montale) and Macari’s surprises within short poems.

How to do this? Keep reading more. Write without thinking. What I keep striving for — approval?